Doha, Qatar: The global effort to make food systems more equitable, sustainable, and resilient must accelerate if the world is to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), said Stefanos Fotiou (pictured), Director of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub.
Speaking to The Peninsula, on the sidelines of the World Summit for Social Development, Fotiou underscored that transforming food systems is not only about improving agriculture but also about addressing the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of sustainable development.
“The main role of the Hub is to support national governments, with the participation of stakeholders and with technical support from the UN system to implement their food system transformation pathways and ensure that they can make their food systems more sustainable and resilient,” Fotiou explained.
He described how the Hub has taken a country-driven approach, first engaging governments and National Food System Conveners to understand their specific needs.
“We took the global momentum and the global messages and tried to translate and operationalise them at the country level,” Fotiou said. “We bring together at the national level the UN system, stakeholders, and the broader ecosystem of support to provide comprehensive and direct assistance to national food system focal points. That’s our main delivery model and our main achievement.”
While global dialogue continues through high-level platforms such as the World Social Summit and the COP climate conferences, Fotiou emphasised that the Hub’s real impact lies in connecting these global initiatives with local action.
However, he cautioned that progress toward the SDGs remains uneven. “A lot of the indicators of the SDGs that are directly related to food systems are not doing well,” he noted. “With hunger, we had a slight improvement this year, but overall, we are not where we need to be. Compared with 2015, we are almost nowhere.”
Fotiou pointed to growing inequality as a critical concern, particularly among family and smallholder farmers, who form the backbone of global food production yet receive only a small share of value-chain benefits.
“There is evidence that poverty is reducing, but at the same time inequality is increasing and this is one of the biggest challenges,” he said. “We need to make agri-food value chains more fair and ensure that those who produce food are properly rewarded, with incomes that provide them with decent livelihoods, social protection, education, and health care.”
According to Fotiou, food systems are central to the entire 2030 Agenda and offer a powerful entry point for advancing multiple SDGs simultaneously.
“Food systems are connected with all aspects of the 2030 Agenda,” he said. “If we make them more sustainable, we’ll see multiple benefits for the environment, for social progress, for reducing inequality, and for achieving all the SDGs.”
He noted that evidence increasingly shows that when countries make their food systems more sustainable, the benefits extend far beyond agriculture. “Fixing food systems is not just about making agriculture more sustainable, it’s about making the entire development of a country more sustainable,” Fotiou added.
